Our foot, a bit crushed perhaps, is iu the door. But iht- 

 call and glamour of Our Land is shouting and singing down 

 the highways and byways of the world, and you, as I, can 

 sense the gathering of the hosts, the banking tide that to- 

 morrow swilling will fill this new tideway of Empire to tht 

 brim, and cast on the far shores of the Congo Forest and the 

 hills of Abyssinia as wrack today's doubts, hesitations, jealous- 

 ies and timid remonstrances, invariable human prelude to greal 

 human happenings. 



Verily the old order changefi and in that near to- 

 morrow when Kilindini, place of deep waters, is churned with 

 the comirgs and goings of mighty fleets — when the Lake 

 swarms with ihe freighting of incalculable treasure — when 

 Nairobi has drowned its frog-chorus in the hum and rattle of 

 the street car — when the Kikuyu "toiler" no longer expends 

 his energy in song — when the official has matured into a civil 

 servant with the elementary civic right of owning land — and the 

 term "settler" has no local meaning, and all alike claim 

 proudly to be folk of B.E.A. — when the inevitable hap 

 hai>pened and yet another miracle has become a commonplace 

 in the history of our Imperial Past — may be Mr. Smith and the 

 Misses and the Masters Smith will take their packet of sand- 

 wiches ?nd their bottles of gaigerbeer to the top of Mount 

 Margaret, and sitting on a cairn of rocks will look down over 

 the grim scarred face of Longonot. They will be discussing 

 the vast eternities of the Southern Rift and across at 

 Mrs. Jones' drawing room, how Tommy is growing out of his 

 trousers, and will be nervous lest they miss the last motor 'bus 

 to town — and the winds of Suswa will be whispering, and if you 

 or I were there we should note a something about Mr. Smith-- 

 an added something by virtue of which Mr. Smith is no longer 

 mere Mr. Smith. Bothersome things, Leslie, these winds of 

 the wilderness that call to our people with the voice of all 

 Time and can wake even in the seeming urban stereotypy of Mr. 

 Smith the same primaeval race promptings that stirred old 

 Bowker, now sleeping for ever below his cairn of stones. They 

 tell the Tale of Empire, do these winds; wild calling to wild, 

 and the urge and surge of blood which must carry our people 

 willy nilly into the last attainable confines of a finite earth, 

 there to persist, absorb, dictate, boss and impose our Will 



Here is no insolence, but the essential Must of things - 

 just "old Bowker sleeping the long sleep on Mount Margaret so 

 that he may be near the drifting herds of game." 



